'On the surface it all seems so pleasant' Gemma Files' Demon Haunted Toronto
Notice bibliographique
Résumé
The subtitle of this paper is a reference to Carl Sagan's 1995 book The Demon Haunted World in which he advocates rationalism as a way of dispelling the superstition that still haunts the modern world. In the work of Canadian horror writer Gemma Files, demons, and other supernatural creatures, really exist but haunt the world because most people dismiss them as superstition. Many of these beings are predatory and the few humans who know of their existence realise that humanity is not necessarily top of the food chain. Because of this a rationalist world-view is inadequate, and a wider definition of nature – one that acknowledges and, therefore, accommodates the supernatural - is required for survival. \n \nIn this paper I discuss Files' 2014 collection of interlocking short stories We Will All Go Down Together and her novel Experimental Film (2015) which is set in the same universe, with the majority of events in both taking place in modern-day Toronto. The former focuses on clans of 'supernatural' beings, who dwell on the margins of consensual reality but regularly infiltrate the human world, while the latter deals with the attempt by a forgotten demonic figure from Slavic folklore to re-enter reality. Both texts involve investigations into missing people and so intersect with crime fiction, a genre grounded in rationalism; however, that the disappearances involve 'supernatural' events, and that some of the investigators are magicians or psychics, places them in the tradition of the 'occult detective' sub-genre which requires a movement beyond the limits of a rationalist world-view. \n \nThe interactions with the human world by 'supernatural' beings, and the tension between a rationalist world-view and the truth about such beings – that they exist outside of the conventional taxonomy of nature - is central to Files' work. She also addresses the myth of Canada as the United States' better mannered, more peaceful neighbour in both texts, and in the essay 'Under These Rocks and Stones', We Will All Go Down Together's afterword, in which she writes: \n \nToronto and Ontario can be exactly as scary as anywhere more exotic, if you know where to \tlook … scarier, maybe. Because, on the surface, it all seems so pleasant.(375) \n \nAs I show, Files uses the horror genre's capacity for estrangement to debunk the myth of 'Canadian-ness' from a postcolonial perspective and reveal the brutal reality of Canada's history – and its present – which the myth conceals, just as her investigators confront the occult truth of nature that rationalism denies.
Récupéré en direct depuis OpenAlex et désinversé. Les résumés ne sont pas conservés dans cette base de données : les index inversés représentent 8,6 Go des 9,3 Go de texte de la base, et le serveur dispose de 13 Go libres.
Comment cette classification a été obtenuedéplier
Prédiction distillée sur la base complète
Imitation des enseignantsNi prévalence calibrée, ni vérité terrain. Validation humaine à venir. Apprise à partir de 10 348 étiquettes directes de Codex et de 10 348 étiquettes directes de Gemma. Le mode candidate est l'union des têtes enseignantes seuillées; le consensus est leur intersection. Ces sorties portent le statut machine_predicted_unvalidated et ne sont ni des étiquettes humaines ni des étiquettes directes de modèles de pointe.
Scores Codex et Gemma par catégorie
| Catégorie | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Métarecherche | 0,001 | 0,002 |
| Méta-épidémiologie (sens strict) | 0,000 | 0,000 |
| Méta-épidémiologie (sens large) | 0,000 | 0,000 |
| Bibliométrie | 0,000 | 0,000 |
| Études des sciences et des technologies | 0,001 | 0,000 |
| Communication savante | 0,000 | 0,001 |
| Science ouverte | 0,001 | 0,000 |
| Intégrité de la recherche | 0,000 | 0,000 |
| Charge utile insuffisante (le modèle a refusé de juger) | 0,003 | 0,001 |
Scores machine (provisoires)
Les deux têtes enseignantes du modèle étudiant, lues sur ce travail. Un score ordonne la base pour la relecture; il n'affirme jamais une catégorie, et le statut de validation accompagne chaque rangée tel quel.
Scores de référence d'un modèle non mature (critères de maturité non atteints, 7 itérations). Un score ordonne; il n'affirme jamais une catégorie.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · tel quel depuis la passe de notation : score_only signifie que le nombre peut ordonner les travaux, et qu'aucune étiquette de catégorie n'en découleClassification
machine, non validéePrédiction automatique; un appel candidat d’une seule tête enseignante, pas un consensus.
Le détail, modèle par modèle et score par score, se trouve en fin de page sous « Comment cette classification a été obtenue ».